With all due respect, we don’t really care what you call them back home. Crayfish, crawdads, mud bugs, yabbie. whatever. We also know that you probably use them for various non-edible purposes — fish bait, aquarium stock, dissection in Zoology 1. In Louisiana, they’re called crawfish (or ecrevisses to French speakers) and they occupy an esteemed place in our collective food culture.

The unenlightened look at a crawfish and see a well-armored aquatic insect — beady eyes, claws, a butt built like a tank — but Louisiana natives look at the same crustacean and see a tiny, freshwater lobster with sweet tail meat wrapped in a crunchy protective coating.

The scientific name for the delicious little beastie is procambarus clarkii (the red swamp crawfish), and originally that’s still their preferred habitat. In the wild, crawfish thrive in standing water and burrow into any kind of soggy ground — swamp floors, riverbanks, ditches, waterlogged cattle pastures –  creating telltale chimneys with the excavated mud. The can handle a little salt in their water, so brackish waterways aren’t really a problem. With such a high water-to-land ratio, swampy south Louisiana is a crawfish wonderland.

Some European cooks, including French and Scandinvian chefs, use the little crawlers for food, but it was Cajun cooks who took the little critters into the big time. As a plentiful resource with a reputation for scavenging, crawfish have traditionally been a food of last resort for denizens of rural Louisiana. Up until the 1950s or so, eating crawfish was a sign of poverty and backwardness. Even now, some older Cajuns have a hard time eating crawfish on the grounds that it “tastes like hard times.”

Over time, boiling points and seafood patios brought the local specialty to more diners, and family crawfish boils became more commonplace across the social spectrum. By the 1970s, crawfish had shed their stigma of “poor man’s food”  and were embraced as a symbol of south Louisiana.

With the exception of rich, labor-intensive crawfish bisque, dishes starring the beady-eyed beast were comparatively rare in New Orleans cooking until the Cajun incursions of the 1980s. When Prudhomme came to the city, he brought the crawfish with him and added the meat to a wide variety of now-standard Louisiana dishes.

Wild crawfish — especially those caught in the Atchafalaya Basin swamp west of Henderson — have traditionally been considered a springtime food. The crawfish lay low during the cold winter and emerge into waiting traps as the water warms up. The omnivorous crawfish feed on the bounty of the swamp and develop a distinctive flavor that varies with the animal’s diet. In Acadiana, “Basin crawfish” are the most prized springtime specimens.

But with the advent of modern aquaculture methods,  large-scale crawfish farms have developed throughout the state, especially in the rice farming country of the Cajun prairie near Lafayette. It’s a perfect example of agricultural multi-tasking: when the rice crop is harvested, the fields are re-flooded and seeded with crawfish, who eat the rotting rice stubble and  grain-based feed. With farmers controlling water and food supply, the crawfish  season now stretches from December to July.

Since they’re cooked while still alive, crawfish don’t travel well and are best consumed near the source, especially in their boiled form. Many of the standard dishes of the Cajun/Creole repertoire — crawfish etouffee, crawfish stew, crawfish pies — only require peeled tail meat, which can be purchased in one-pound bags from a variety of seafood processors.

The soft shelled crab is a regular blue crab caught in an embarrassing state of exoskeletal undress.

Like a school kid in mid-puberty, the crab routinely outgrows its shell and needs to get rid of its confining duds. The biological routine is to binge eat like a monster, absorb as much water as possible, and shred the shell like a gluttonous Homer Simpson doing his impersonation of the Incredible Hulk. A crab in this pre-molting mode is called a “buster crab” (insert old Flash Gordon joke here). As the covering breaks, the crab scampers off with a larger, softer shell, which starts to harden in about twelve hours.

Unfortunately for the crabs, this stage of development makes them vulnerable, tasty, and popular with diners. With no hard shell to crack, soft-shelled crabs require very little cleaning and can be eaten — claws, legs and all — without a nutcracker in sight. The most common preparations are sautéed in butter, lightly panneed or deep fried and crammed legs-up in a Jazzfest poboy.

These days very little is left to nature and even less to chance. Though the seasons for live soft-shells are still spring (March-June) and early fall (September-October), crab processors have elaborate “cage and tank” setups to monitor and manage the crab’s change of clothing. During the peak seasons, you can find soft shells live and kicking; other times you’re most likely getting a frozen busters.

Whether they’re packed into an overstuffed poboy  sautéed to buttery perfection or butterflied and lovingly stuffed with lump crabmeat dressing, these tasty and familiar crustaceans find its way onto just about every menu in Louisiana. To the uninitiated, they’re not much to look at — beady eyes, long whipping whiskers, and a thin, translucent shell — but to Louisiana cooks, they’re a fresh-caught treasure that appears from late spring until mid-December.

In a time when most shrimp are farm-raised, quick-frozen and pre-peeled halfway around the globe, Louisiana shrimp are still wild things — starting their lives in saline marshes on the coast and growing to maturity in the shallow bays and saltwater lakes along the Gulf. The state is the largest domestic producer of shrimp with two bona fide shrimp seasons per year — brown shrimp from May to July and white shrimp from August to December. In season, most markets proudly display their shrimp with head and “whiskers” still attached — a sure sign of fresh product.

Louisiana seafood nationalists (chefs and diners alike) are justifiably proud of the native shrimp’s superior texture and flavor and protective of coastal fishing communities that have suffered in recent years. Farm-raised imports from countries like Thailand and India — shelled, pre-frozen, and as tasty as silicone caulk — have been dumped on the domestic seafood market, driving down prices as the economic invisible hand puts a stranglehold on Louisiana’s shrimpers. The local seafood industry has started to fight back with education –  alerting diners and chefs to the difference between local product and the farm-raised imports.

uge claws, menacing spikes, six pointy legs — the blue crab needs all the protection it can get. That’s because inside its hard protective shell, this bulletproof crustacean stashes away some of the most sought-after meat in the sea.

The crab know as  callinectes sapidus (Latin for “savory beautiful swimmer”) plays a special part in seafood-centric cuisines from Texas’ Gulf coast all the way around the tip of Florida and up the Atlantic coast as far as New York. Maryland’s much-ballyhooed Chesapeake Bay crabs and South Carolina’s prized she-crabs are the same species that Louisiana watermen pick out of traps all along the state’s coastline. In fact, due to its warm water and ideal salt-to-fresh water ratio, the Louisiana gulf coast leads the nation in blue crab export and crabmeat production. In certain seasons, the crabs they’re crackin’ in Baltimore might have grown up in Louisiana waters.

If you’ve ever worked your way through a whole boiled crab, you probably know that getting to the meaty bits is anything but simple. Bits of shell, cartilage, and the shards of shell are always a problem, and the deeper you get into a crab, the more delicate hand work it requires.

Jumbo lump crabmeat, found just behind the crab’s rounded swimming legs, is the most delicate, and richest in terms of flavor, texture and cost. This is the flawless, addictive meat you’ll find in crabmeat salads and many Creole butter-sauce dishes. If a waitresss draws out her syllables while saying “topped with jummmbo lummmmp crabmmmmeat sautéed in butter,” she’s seducing you with shellfish. If you can handle the price, succumb to the pleasure. You won’t be disappointed.

Backfin meat comes next; a bit less pristine than the lump variety, but still possessing a fine, clean flavor and preferred for marquee dishes like crab and corn bisque, stuffed crab or crabcakes. Flake crabmeat (also called “special”) is less costly and comes in smaller shreds than the more expensive grades. Last comes the claw meat, which doesn’t have the pure white color of the body meats, but instead leans toward the grayish hues with a nuttier flavor and texture similar to lobster tail.

You also might see another swimmer-related term at local seafood markets: Gumbo Crabs. These are smaller specimens, usually cut in half and frozen for stocks and seafood gumbos.

The noble whiskered wonder doesn’t get the same kind of play in New Orleans that it does in drier areas of the Deep South — but then,  there’s tough competition for “marquee fish” status this close to the Gulf.

In nearby Mississippi, aquaculture turned the Delta into a veritable fish factory, churning out tons of grain-fed catfish that can safely escape the  “bottom feeder” stigma that’s plagued the species for decades. These days, marketing campaigns have presented the Fish Formerly Known as Mudcat into a palate-friendly, not-gamey-at-all version of the  other other white meat.

New Orleans cooks, always the contrarians, tend to dote on catfish caught in the waters near Des Allemands, Louisiana on the Lafourche/St. Charles Parish line. Because these “wild catfish” eat what they please, they’re known for having a more pronounced fishy flavor than their farm-raised counterparts. An overheard comment on the subject: “I want my catfish to taste like catfish instead of nothing.”

Like blue crabs and various shrimp species, the American oyster (crassostrea virginica) thrives in the mixed-water environment of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. Raised in reefs where salty ocean water and sweet river waters mingle, these tasty mollusks are a valuable part of the state’s food culture and modern-day economic base.

Among shellfish, oysters are most similar to mussels. At a certain point in their early life cycle, free-swimming larvae cement themselves to coastal reefs and settle in for the long haul, filtering out nutrients (mineral and micro-vegetation) from the surrounding waters. Oyster flavor can varies naturally depending on the balance of fresh and salty water flowing by the oyster beds.

In earlier days, these collections of shellfish occurred naturally, but over time oystermen  (many of them Croatians from the Adriatic coast) started hedging their bets with “seed oysters” — a management technique that assures fresh oysters in the city’s raw bars year ’round. With over a million acres of cultivated reefs, Louisiana is consistently one of the country’s top oyster producers.

In a biological sense, peak season for these meaty treats occurs in the winter months, when the oysters are busy packing on fat (glycogen) in anticipation of an active summer spawning season. When they’re at their flavorful peak, with sweetness from the fat adding a savory dimension to the oyster’s natural saltiness

That’s not to say that oysters won’t be available during summer vacation — they’ll just be more flavorful (plump and sweet ) when the Gulf waters are coldest. All the more reason to hit town during Mardi Gras season.

Many of the traditional Creole seafood dishes in the old line repertoire require fish that fits a certain flavor profile — usually “delicate, mildly flavored white fish.”

Luckily, there are plenty of species in the Gulf that fit that description. Here are a few of the more common varieties likely to show up on menus and specials lists around town.

• pompano — A small, delicate fish considered my many to be the tasties in the gulf. Usually served broiled or occasionally blackened. Most common in summer.
• speckled trout — Also known as the spotted sea trout. The preferred fish for pan-fried preparations (muniere, amandine). Not to be confused with common fresh water species such as lake, brook or rainbow trout.
• redfish – (a.k.a. red drum) When Paul Prudhomme started blackening this common fish, skyrocketing demand decimated the Louisiana’s coastal populations. Commercial fishing in the gulf halted in 1988, so the fish is fairly rare unless you know a local sport fisherman. Some farm-raised redfish are starting to appear on menus across town, but some chefs would rather substitute other wild gulf fish than use the milder flavored domesticated fish.
• black drum — A cousin of the redfish. Commonly substituted for the rare redfish in popular dishes.
• red snapper — Another low-oil fish with firm meat and an almost sweet flavor.
• sheepshead — Often considered a “trash fish” by commercial fisherman, this once-fashionable gulf fish are making a comeback among younger chefs. Similar to speckled trout.
• mahi mahi -Despite it’s Hawaiian name, this colorful Gulf  fish is known for its firm texture and sweet flavor.
• escolar — A more full-flavored, oily fish. Closely related to tuna. Usually grilled.
• wahoo — Another Gulf member of the mackerel family
• tuna — You might this fish with the North Atlantic, but yellowfin tuna that roam the Gulf and often appear on plates in New Orleans. Firm fleshed and meaty in texture.

Also look for amberjack, grouper, triggerfish and tripletail.